LONDON, (Reuters) – The Ministry of Defence in Britain announced on Friday that they had started the deployment of military personnel to hospitals suffering staff shortages or extreme pressures from record COVID-19 levels.

According to the government, 200 Armed Forces personnel were made available for support of the National Health Service in London (NHS), over the course of the next three week.

Britain saw a spike in coronavirus infections due to Omicron variant. The country has been reporting over 150,000 new cases every day for the past week.

Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of England, has stated that England is able to withstand the surge with no new restrictions due to vaccinations and the lesser severity of the variant. However, he warned of difficulties in the coming weeks as staffing becomes disrupted by self-isolation.

To assist in COVID-19 testing or vaccination programs, the government also has deployed armed forces.

Sajid Javid, the minister of health, stated that the NHS workers are being supported once more. He said they were working 24 hours a day across London to support the NHS during this winter.

Britain has already reported almost 150,000 COVID-19 deaths. Two years after a pandemic began, the state-run healthcare system was facing an acute morale crisis and staffing shortages, according to a Thursday lawmaker report.

Reporters warned that the current staffing crisis may hinder efforts to catch-up on record waiting lists for elective treatments due to COVID-19 disruption.

Chaand Nagpaul is the Chair of the Council of the British Medical Association. He stated that the NHS had a record-breaking level of staff absent.

Nagpaul said that even though the government has used the military to assist in London, we still have a problem national at the moment.” Sky News interviewed Nagpaul.

This is a major problem in the country and this staff shortage has never been seen before.”